A. E. Verrill — North American Cephalopods. 281 



long as in some of our larger specimens.* It should be remarked, bow- 

 ever, that Lesueur's figure of 0. illecehrosa shows the body too small 

 and too short in proportion to the size of the fin, and the fin wrong 

 in shape and occupying more than half the length of the mantle ; the 

 proportions of the arms are also erroneous. But Lesueur explains 

 these defects by his statement that the figures were hasty sketches 

 made for the sake of preserving the colors, and that he saved a speci- 

 men by which to correct, afterwards, his drawings and description, 

 but the specimen saved turned out to be L. pavo^ so that the orig- 

 inal sketches were published without correction. Tryon's figure 342 

 is a poor copy of one of Lesueur's, without credit. 



If the European form be i-eally identical with the American, its dis- 

 tribution is very anomalous, for while the former is a southern Euro- 

 pean form, inhabiting the Mediterranean and scarcely extending north 

 of the southern waters of Great Britain, where it appears to be rare, our 

 species is strictly a northern, cold water form, rarely found south of 

 Cape Cod, even in winter. Its range extends quite to the Arctic Ocean. 



Notes on Habits. 



When living, this is a very beautiful creature, owing to the bril- 

 liancy of its eyes and its bright and quickly changing colors. It is 

 also very quick and graceful in its movements. This is the most com- 

 mon ' squid ' north of Cape Cod, and extends as far south as Newport, 

 R. I. It is very abundant in Massachusetts Bay, the Bay of Fundy, 

 and northward to Newfoundland. It is taken on the coast of New- 

 foundland in immense numbers, and used as bait for cod-fish. It oc- 

 curs in vast schools when it visits the coast, but whether it seeks 

 those shores for the purpose of spawning or in search of food is not 

 known. I have been unable to learn anything personally in regard 

 to its breeding habits, nor have I been able to ascertain that anyone 

 has any information in regard either to the time, manner, or place of 

 spawning. At Eastport, Me., I have several times observed them in 

 large numbers, in midsummer. But at that time they seem to be 

 wholly engaged in the pursuit of food, following the schools of her- 

 ring, which were then in pursuit of shrimp {Thysanopoda Norvegica)., 

 which occur in the Bay of Fundy, at times, in great quantities, swim- 

 ming at the surface. The stomachs of the squids taken on these oc- 

 casions were distended with fragments of Thysanopoda, or with the 

 flesh of the herring, or with a mixture of the two, but their reproduc- 



* According to Jeffreys (Brit. Conch., V, p. 129, pi. 5) the English 0. sagittatus ha^ 

 the fin " from | to nearly ^ the length of the mantle ;" and the form of the 

 figured by him, is different from that of our species. Jt\^/ O^ ^^ 







